Bristol Airport (UK) caters for scheduled and charter flights both international and domestic. A total of 5.9 million passengers used the airport in 2012, making it the only airport out of the UK’s top ten to see its passenger numbers increase for the 3rd consecutive year.

The challenge.

Bristol Airport was looking to reduce its passenger queuing times at checkpoints, as well as optimising resources and enhancing revenues from the duty-free retail areas.

Why ICTS Europe?

ICTS UK has been successfully delivering security services to Bristol airport since 2010, and therefore demonstrated intimate familiarity with the airport’s infrastructure and challenges.

By scanning a boarding card, SmartQ efficiently allocates each passenger with the appropriate security lane based on a pre-defined criteria such as destination, departure time etc. It provides a real-time account of passenger queue times and allows the forecasting of future passenger traffic on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. This provides the airport with a valuable tool for the optimisation of resources and efficient running of terminal operations and planning of terminal layout.

What did we do?

A total of 7 SmartQ self service gates were installed at the airport’s entrance to the secured area. All passengers were to scan their boarding passes at the gates.

The outcome.

Results have been remarkable with queue times reduced dramatically.

In 2011 queue times were on average 16 minutes and thanks to SmartQ, have been reduced to just 3 minutes in 2012. Each passenger passed through the SmartQ gate in less than 3 seconds, replacing any previous manual checks.